]]>There are numerous surveys about smart speakers. However, new data from Kantar Worldpanel is unique in comparing attitudes and behaviors of Google Home and Amazon Alexa owners.

The big takeaways. There are two big takeaways from the survey, conducted in late 2018. According to the findings, Google Home owners do more with their smart speakers and have greater satisfaction (“far higher NPS scores”) than owners of Amazon Echo/Alexa devices.

Kantar WorldPanel

Broader use cases for Google Home. The most common use case for smart speakers is streaming music, followed by asking about weather. Beyond this, Google Home owners are using their devices for a broader range of functions than Amazon Alexa users (see chart below). In particular, owners of Google Home are more likely to make calls, control smart home devices, check business hours and order food or groceries.

Demographically, Alexa owners skew slightly more female (54 percent) and older than Google Home users, who skew more male (60 percent) and younger.

Kantar WorldPanel

Computer use for Home users declines. Another significant finding is that 16 percent of Google Home owners are using their laptop or desktop computers less after buying a smart speaker. This is undoubtedly tied into the broader array of use cases for Google Home; it becomes a replacement device in some instances.

The study also found that Google Home owners are more likely to own and integrate more smart devices (e.g., thermostat, security, lighting) than Alexa owners. Unfortunately, the study did not isolate the type of device being used; so we don’t know if smart displays are more likely to drive some of the observed behaviors (e.g., commerce).

Why you should care. There are more than 100 million smart speaker devices in U.S. homes. Currently Alexa has a dominant market share, although the numbers vary by survey and analyst estimate. Though Alexa is the stronger brand, these NPS figures suggest that Google Home will get better word of mouth and could erode Alexa’s lead over time.

The broader usage by Google Home owners suggests that we may be starting to see some of the anticipated behaviors that will have business and marketing implications, such as local search and shopping, begin to materialize — or early indications that they will materialize over time.

]]>Google launches News Initiative subscriptions lab for publishers/google-launches-news-initiative-subscriptions-lab-for-publishers-314291
Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:51:36 +0000/?p=314291The company also announced new fact-checking tools and other efforts to stop the spread of 'misinformation.'

]]>The Google News Initiative (GNI) is one year old. In a blog post Wednesday, Google News VP Richard Gingras detailed the company’s efforts to support journalism and combat the spread of disinformation.

This anniversary comes against the backdrop of ongoing controversy. Most recently, YouTube (and Facebook) were criticized for not acting more decisively to stop the spread of hate speech in the wake of the recent New Zealand killings. GNI’s birthday celebration also occurs in the context of new copyright rules in Europe that seek to generate more revenue for media publications from licensing fees from news aggregators.

Helping publishers with subscriptions. As digital advertising (often sold and served through Google) has failed to sustain many publishers, more have turned to subscriptions. And last year Google introduced “Subscribe with Google,” a streamlined process designed to attract Google users who have payment cards on file. Google sign-in credentials are used as the publications’ login information; publishers receive the subscriber information.

Google’s Gingras said that roughly “50 partners from 19 countries have signed up to implement Subscribe with Google and publishers like The Washington Post, the Financial Times, Folha de S. Paulo and Nine Publishing are using the product.” The company is also testing a contribution- or membership-based payment scenario.

He also discussed a new effort called the GNI Digital Subs Lab, which seeks to help publishers in North America and Latin America “transform their approach to digital subscriptions.” It’s intended to create sustainable business models for publishers.

Combating misinformation. The post also recounts numerous steps taken to stop the spread of misinformation. Gingras said, “We’ve partnered with the International Fact Check Network and dozens of newsrooms worldwide to quell the spread of misinformation, especially during key times like elections. We’ve supported initiatives like Verificado in Mexico, Comprova in Brazil, CekFakta in Indonesia, FactCheckEU and the journalist training network in India.” He listed several other, similar efforts.

Gingras then announced new tools for fact checkers: the Fact Check Markup tool and the Fact Check Explorer. Neither is live yet.

Spending to support publishers. In addition to the above, Google listed many of the other pro-journalism tools and initiatives it has championed or funded in the recent past:

A $10 million global media literacy campaign with Google.org last year

Teen digital literacy training and programming, in conjunction with the Poynter Institute

Support for Media Veritas in Europe to promote media literacy

More than $5 million in audio innovation grants

$25 million YouTube program to help publishers develop “sustainable video operations”

The GNI Cloud program (subsidizing GSuite and Google Cloud services) for smaller publishers

Finally the company touted Newspack, a content management and publishing system from WordPress and Google, announced in January. It’s targeted to smaller, local news publishers that have struggled with traffic and revenue and don’t have technology resources.

Why you should care. Facebook recently lamented the lack of local news to show users in many smaller and rural U.S. markets. And earlier this year the company said it was investing $300 million in local journalism over the next three years.

After they effectively disintermediated news publishers and their advertisers, both Facebook and Google have come (over a period of years) to recognize the need to invest in the future of journalism or be deprived of a major source of content users care about. You could call it “enlightened self-interest.”

]]>Google fined another $1.7 billion by EU for ‘abusive’ AdSense publisher contracts/google-fined-another-1-7-billion-by-eu-for-abusive-adsense-publisher-contracts-314248
Wed, 20 Mar 2019 13:58:32 +0000/?p=314248Google has now been fined a cumulative total of roughly $9.3 billion and there's one more potential case lurking.

]]>Google faces its third significant antitrust fine in the EU. This time the company was penalized 1.49 billion euros ($1.69 billion) for “abusive practices in online advertising” involving publisher contracts surrounding AdSense for search.

The fine “takes account of the duration and gravity of the infringement. . . . [and] has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google’s revenue from online search advertising intermediation in the EEA,” according to the European Commission (EC) statement.

More than $9 billion in fines. Last year Google was fined a record 4.3 billion euros (roughly $5 billion) antitrust fine resulting from Google Play app pre-install contracts with phone makers. And in 2017, Google was fined 2.4 billion euros ($2.7 billion) for favoring its own content in shopping search results.

All three formal antitrust complaints have resulted in heavy fines, a total of 8.2 billion euros ($9.3 billion). Google has appealed both the previous fines and will likely appeal this one.

The “abusive contracts.” The EC said that exclusivity provisions in Google AdWords agreements (“AdSense for Search“) with third-party publishers prohibited them from using competing services and restricted the way publishers were able to display ads from Google’s rivals.

Antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager issued the following statement in conjunction with the decision:

“Today the Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for illegal misuse of its dominant position in the market for the brokering of online search adverts. Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate – and consumers the benefits of competition.”

The EC said that Google’s agreements made it difficult for Microsoft or Yahoo to compete for publishers’ business.

Here come the private lawsuits. Google changed the agreements in 2016 when the formal antitrust complaint was issued. So the disputed conduct has ended. However the EC says that Google may now face civil actions for damages “by any person or business affected by its anti-competitive behaviour.”

Why you should care. The EC’s Margrethe Vestager’s term as Europe’s antitrust lead is up this year and she will not likely be reappointed. However, before she goes I would expect a fourth Statement of Objections (formal charges) to be filed against Google in local search that will probably turn into in another big fine. The logic is virtually identical to that in the shopping search case that resulted in a $2.7 billion penalty.

Together, these fines and outcomes put increasing pressure on U.S. officials to take some new action against Google despite the closure of the 2013 FTC antitrust case without significant penalties.

]]>Google is reportedly seeking to avoid further European antitrust penalties in shopping search by testing out a new link placement to drive traffic to competitors’ sites. Yelp has strongly criticized the proposal, saying it represents a resuscitation of an earlier approach that was rejected.

Google antitrust backstory. In 2017, the European Commission (EC) fined Google roughly $2.7 billion for “abusing its dominant position” in shopping search. Google has appealed the decision. But in the interim Google has implemented a number of changes to provide theoretically equal treatment for rival Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) in Europe. Those changes have met with qualified support from the EC but been criticized by the CSEs themselves recently.

Google now competes with rival CSEs in PLAs. However the CSEs have complained that “the harm to competition, consumers and innovation caused by Google’s illegal conduct has continued unabated” a year after the remedy was implemented.

Rival links redux. While it’s not entirely clear what the new approach entails — we haven’t seen any official screens — Yelp believes this is a duplication of a much earlier proposal to place links to competitors’ sites at the top of search results. That approach, informally called “rival links,” was heavily criticized in 2013 and 2014 while it was being tested in shopping and local search as insufficient to generate meaningful traffic for competitors.

Eye tracking analysis. Yelp argued, then and now, that the rival links approach was flawed. The company says it’s seeing the new test screens in the wild and has already run an eye tracking study on these pages. At the top of the page appears to be a button with the logos and brands of alternative content providers.

Eye tracking analysis of results on Google Search.

At least in this screen shot above, the bulk of attention appears to be on the map pack. There’s some attention to traditional organic results (below the fold) and some to the rival links. Yelp argues, “the latest rival links proposal … receives a slightly improved but ultimately marginal percentage of clicks (around 5%), while Google’s capture of web traffic has increased by approximately 20% since the original proposal over five years ago. Seven in ten clicks go to Google (compared to about five in ten clicks from the ‘13-’14 proposals).”

Yelp, which has been one of Google’s most persistent critics, appears to be trying to pre-empt Google’s any official embrace of this new approach with its critique.

Why you should care. The EC’s multi-billion-dollar fines have essentially not impacted Google’s revenues or stock price. Margrethe Vestager’s term as Europe’s antitrust czar and Silicon Valley antagonist will expire this year. She’s probably not going to get a second term, which raises the question of whether her tough approach will be continued by a successor.

Google will be compelled to comply with the EC’s directives unless a court overturns them. Yelp will likely continue to advocate for fundamental changes in how Google presents results. But the EU debate can also be seen as something of a dress rehearsal for arguments that will make it to the U.S. if a new antitrust inquiry actually happens.

Partnership with McDonald’s. Last October, Waze (which is owned by Google) and McDonald’s tested a campaign that connected OOH with in-car ads. Waze geofenced roughly 300 billboards in Southern California. Drivers along routes passing McDonald’s billboards were shown “zero-speed takeover” ad units, which only appear when the car is stopped.

The ads included a “drive there” call-to-action, which then routed drivers to a nearby McDonald’s location. Ads could be shown at any point along the driver’s route but were not shown if drivers had gone out of range of McDonald’s locations.

The campaign was deemed a success; there were more than six million impressions and 8,400 “navigations” to nearby McDonald’s locations. Roughly two million Waze users saw the campaign, which is being expanded to additional markets.

Only direct response captured. According to Waze’s Todd Palatnek who runs the company’s OOH business, Waze only measured real-time rerouting. Once the ad appeared, with a drive-time estimate, users were given the option to get directions. Waze captured those rerouting navigations.

There was no trailing attribution window. In other words, the company only reported instances when drivers changed their route upon seeing the ad units. Undoubtedly there were drivers who saw the ads that didn’t go immediately to a McDonald’s and visited a store sometime thereafter. Those visits were not captured or reported — though it’s possible to do so.

The campaign (for McRib) was being treated like direct response, but there’s a significant awareness or branding dimension that wasn’t addressed. So it’s likely this campaign was more successful than what Waze was able to report.

Accessing the ‘digital dark zone.’ Palatnek said the car has been considered a “digital dark zone,” because online marketers have not had a way to reach commuters and drivers until very recently (putting aside streaming audio). He says that these coordinated OOH and in-car ads are a fit for a range of industries and advertisers. Beyond QSR, those could include fashion, entertainment, automotive and retail.

I asked whether Waze had received any complaints about these ads. Palatnek said he was not aware of any. Zero-speed takeover units, in particular, disappear when the car is in motion.

Following the initial exposure and PR surrounding the campaign Palatnek told me there’s been “lots of in-bound interest” from brands and marketers.

Why you should care. OOH is the only traditional medium that is seeing growth. Part of the reason for that is because mobile-location data now make billboard exposures measurable and trackable to the store. Location data and audience insights can also be used for smarter OOH placements.

Waze has other mechanisms (i.e., “save for later”) that allow drivers to interact with ads and enable subsequent action or measurement. That makes for some intriguing scenarios, such as discounts or deals or special events. There are also lots of things that can be done with ad creative, both for the OOH placements and the in-car units. Palatnek agreed.

While OOH has recently become more “digital,” using location data, the Waze in-car tie-in offers a powerful set of new options for brands and marketers that are only going to get more interesting over time. This is the future of OOH.

]]>The office of Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO) is targeting SEO fraudsters. Ombudsman Kate Carnell has said that the industry is rife with “horror stories” in which small businesses (SMBs) are ripped off by SEO consultants “over-promising and under-delivering.”

Advocating for SEO regulation. She has called on Australian SMBs to come forward to tell their stories and intends to present her findings to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission in an effort to prompt new regulations. Reportedly, the ACCC is already underway with a broad “digital platforms inquiry” but not specifically focused on SEO industry practices.

The ASBFEO doesn’t have its own regulatory authority. It can investigate and it advocate but not independently create new regulations or enforce them.

Many problems believed unreported. There were roughly 100 formal SEO-related complaints in Australia last year, a relatively small number. However the ASBFEO’s office believes most fraudulent or exploitative SEO engagements go unreported. In an interview with SmartCompany magazine, Carnell says that a lack of regulation has allowed “a minefield of dodgy practitioners” and fraudsters to flourish.

In the U.S., Google has taken action periodically against SEO fraud and abuse. Most recently, Google sued Supreme Marketing Group (d/b/a Small Business Solutions) and put the company out of business. Small Business Solutions, like many scammers falsely told local businesses that it was affiliated with Google. In the U.K., in 2017, regulators shut down a company called Movette, which used fraudulent tactics to sell a Google My Business listings management service.

Google also set up a complaint center, where people can report third-party violations of Google’s policies, including making robocalls, misleading about being affiliated with Google or making claims about ranking guarantees.

SMBs being exploited. While it’s not the norm, the practice of implying or explicitly lying about being an agent or affiliate of Google is not uncommon among SEO and digital marketing firms preying upon SMBs. Survey data suggest that U.S. SMBs receive more than 20 sales contacts a month from companies trying to acquire their marketing business. Most of these are not fraudulent; however there are quite a few robocalls that lead with “your listing on Google is unverified” and operate in a very gray area that is essentially deceptive.

Why you should care. There are many talented and skilled SEO firms and consultants, and bogus claims and exploitative practices by bad actors damage the industry and its reputation overall. SEO fraud or deception aimed at small business is a significant problem in the U.S. Although there have been successful efforts to shut down individual firms, the problem is not isolated to these few entities.

Although Google has undertaken lawsuits and made it possible to complain directly, there is more that can be done to educate small businesses about how to spot bad actors or what to do if manipulated into an agreement.

Optimizing for voice search is synonymous with optimizing for local SEO since both are “about ranking as high as possible” in search results, says a new report by Chatmeter, which scored 12 major retail and restaurant brands to assess their voice-search readiness, including Target, Walmart, Apple and Wendy’s among others.

A ‘complete’ local SEO strategy. Chatmeter defines a “complete local SEO strategy” as one that involves reputation and listings management, local SEO, local pages and local social media pages.

The company created a “local brand visibility” score that combines reputation, social media and local SEO elements: “customer activity levels, listing accuracy, rankings, customer ratings, and local competitors all factor into the score.” The idea is those that are ranking for local queries will also be found in voice search results.

Target wins, Starbucks loses. A score of more than 70 is considered an industry leader, between 50 and 70 is average and below 50 is poor. None of the brands in the study qualified as an industry leader in terms of visibility. And Starbucks was on the edge of a failing grade. The overall winner was Target.

The brands with the strongest showings in each of the categories was as follows:

Review score — TJ Maxx

Social score — Starbucks

Listings — Target

Organic search — TJ Maxx

Chatmeter observed that all brands were weak (to varying degrees) in three key areas: review response strategy, local social media and optimizing for unbranded keywords. Listings accuracy is where most brands in the study (including others beyond those above) did fairly well.

Why you should care. Presumably, the SEO problems that Chatmeter identified are common among multi-location brands and enterprises. The company advises brands to address these areas (reviews, local-social, unbranded keywords) for meaningful improvements in their local rankings generally and voice search in particular.

Some SEOs might dispute the idea that voice search optimization is identical to local SEO optimization. But there are key areas of overlap, at a minimum.

Mobile searches carry a heavy dose of local intent and voice searchers are more likely to be looking for location information. At least that’s according to a 2010 stat, which has been widely republished.

]]>DuckDuckGo a new ‘default search’ option for Chrome, is it time to start paying attention?/duckduckgo-a-new-default-search-option-for-chrome-is-it-time-to-start-paying-attention-313940
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 18:08:08 +0000/?p=313940The upstart search engine's visibility has been growing.

]]>Google has reportedly introduced new options into the list of potential “default” search engines available to Chrome users. Most notably, DuckDuckGo has now become one of those options in 60 markets around the world.

DDG joins the list. In the past users were always free to manually add alternatives to the existing choices, which included Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL in the U.S. However, the overwhelming majority of Chrome users don’t do that kind of customization; Google is the default default engine.

DuckDuckGo has also offered a Chrome extension. It prompts users that don’t have the extension currently installed with its privacy pitch: “your data shouldn’t be for sale.”

According to TechCrunch, DuckDuckGo has been added in 60 markets, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Greece, India, Mexico, Philippines, South Africa, U.K. U.S. and numerous others.

More visibility. Chrome is the world’s most popular browser, with a 62 percent market share globally. In the U.S., according to StatCounter, the market is more competitive:

Chrome — 49.3 percent

Safari — 31.6 percent

Microsoft browsers — 9.8 percent

Firefox — 4.5 percent

Others — 4.8 percent

The addition of DuckDuckGo to the list of Chrome default options will undoubtedly provide a PR boost. We’ll see whether it drives addition adoption and search volume.

The company’s privacy friendly message has been resonating with many users, which has partly resulted in the search engine’s increasing query volumes. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified yesterday before Congress on privacy and online advertising.

Why you should care. If current trends continue it’s not outrageous to suggest DuckDuckGo’s market share could eventually exceed Yahoo’s. It outperformed Bing in terms of user engagement in a 2016 analysis by SimilarWeb.

SEOs will want to pay attention to whether more traffic starts coming from DuckDuckGo and think about optimizing for it. Yelp performs well for local queries on DuckDuckGo, so optimizing for Yelp can help locally-focused businesses rank.

A Google Analytics note. Speaking of tracking … Chrome may consider DuckDuckGo a search engine, but Google Analytics still doesn’t count it among the 50 odd default search engines it categorizes under organic. DuckDuckGo traffic instead registers as referral traffic unless you set up a filter to recategorize it as organic traffic.

]]>What will Google Hotels mean for online booking sites?/what-will-google-hotels-mean-for-online-booking-sites-313851
Tue, 12 Mar 2019 21:37:11 +0000/?p=313851The new site mirrors the UI of Google Flights and could have a similar affect on the hotel booking market.

]]>Nearly a decade ago, Google bought travel software company ITA. ITA was the company behind the reservations systems for many major airlines and travel sites such as Kayak, Orbitz, Hotwire and many others. At the time of the acquisition, Google said it wanted to create new kinds of online travel experiences that “solve end user problems” and “look different” from existing tools, according to then Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

A decade of development. It has taken a very long time for those differentiated experiences to start showing up — and they’re arguably not all that differentiated (except by being a part of Google). About seven years ago the company launched Google Flights, which has received several UI and feature upgrades over time. Then there was Google Trips in 2016, a travel app integrated with Gmail. Now Google has launched a new Hotel search and booking site.

Google Hotels offers all the functionality and tools of its competitors such as Kayak, Expedia and Booking.com. It has the benefit of Google Maps and integration with Google search results (generally pretty high in results). The question thus arises: will Google Hotels create a giant black hole that sucks all the direct traffic away from online hotel booking sites?

There’s some evidence that Google flights is having a significant impact on the market, suggesting that Google Hotels will be successful as well.

Why you should care. According to the U.S. Travel Association, more than $1 billion was spent on leisure travel and $317 billion on business travel in 2017. Digital ad spending by the travel industry is projected to exceed $9 billion this year, according to several industry estimates. It’s a massive market.

Google Hotels is part of Google’s larger play for an increasing share of that vertical advertising pie. Google also believes it’s serving the consumer with a new and improved hotel finder.

Online paid-search competition is intensifying with many hotel brands bidding on rival’s names and trademarks. It’s getting much more challenging to be visible in organic results for hotel category searches (e.g., hotels Los Angeles). Accordingly, hospitality brands are now all but compelled to buy Hotel Ads to appear anywhere above the fold.

DuckDuckGo Founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified Tuesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee on online privacy. The committee was holding a hearing on GDPR, CCPA and potential U.S. privacy legislation.

Contextual targeting vs. behavioral advertising. In prepared remarks Weinberg argued that “privacy legislation is not anti-advertising” and cited DuckDuckGo as an example. The company serves old-school contextual search ads that don’t rely on personal data and don’t retarget consumers.

He said that the company has “been profitable using contextual advertising since 2014, and last year we earned substantially more than the $25 million revenue floor that subjects a company to CCPA.” Weinberg speculated that returning to contextual ads “would allow companies to remain profitable, or even become more profitable – all without the unintended consequences of behavioral advertising.”

Privacy good for business. Beyond this, Weinberg made the case that privacy is good for the bottom line: “Consumers flock to brands they trust and respect.” He said that DuckDuckGo had grown as consumers had become more privacy conscious.

Source: SurveyMonkey, n= 2,122 U.S. adults (3/19)

A recent poll of more than 2,000 U.S. adults conducted by online publication Axios found a clear majority believe that there need to be more consumer privacy protections.

Privacy legislation forcing competition. Weinberg made a third, very provocative point, which is that “well-drafted privacy legislation can spur more competition and innovation in one of the most foundational markets of the Internet: digital advertising.” He said consumers should be able to opt-out of online tracking — theoretically that’s true today — and that “monopoly platforms could be prohibited from combining data across their different business lines.”

Why you should care. The notion that privacy protections could be combined in the same legislation with rules to promote online competition is going to appeal to many in Washington. (Elisabeth Warren has made breaking up “big tech” part of her presidential platform.) Indeed, Weinberg’s testimony will likely be persuasive to many on the committee and in the gallery.

Whereas the outlook for federal privacy legislation was very dim at the beginning of the year, it appears to be gaining momentum in Congress and the media. However, it remains to be seen if these and other hearings translate into concrete legislation, which would then need to pass a very divided Congress.